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A Most Remarkable Synchronicity

This article/reminiscence follows up
Toby
Johnson's account of a sort of mystical experience he had in the summer
of 1968 at the Servite Priory in Riverside, CA. Here's a link to that
page, titled: Intimations

In
January of
1970, I left the Servites in Riverside. The previous summer I’d worked
in the mental hospital in Norwalk and had my dramatic experience of
coming out in a verbal fight with Bruce K. as we were driving home from
the hospital after work in the admissions unit; Bruce had needled me
about being paranoid and said something to me like, “you homosexuals…”
I’d felt a rush of shame and fear and thought I might start to cry. But
then I realized if I started crying I’d end up in the hospital as a
patient; instead I should feel and release the anger—as Dr Bruni, the
psychologist on the ward recommended to all the patients in the daily
group sessions. So I transformed the tears into shouts and shouted at
Bruce all the way home to the Servite Priory in Anaheim where we were
living. I remember just as I pulled the car into the parking space in
the lot beside the Servite Residence behind Servite High School, “I am
gay.” And it was a transformative moment.

I continued with the Servites, but felt a growing sense of conflict.
Roy Neuner, Tom Sheerin and I were all in that Novitiate class at
Riverside Priory with Eddie Penonsek as Novicemaster. I think we were
fairly open about being gay. I recall that this upset one of the other
novices who had a sort of breakdown and locked himself in the basement
for a couple of days. I remember thinking that it was OK for me to be
gay and know it and be open, but maybe it wasn’t OK that other people
couldn’t handle that reality. What was I doing as a Catholic seminarian
anymore? And, having read Alan Watts and discovering Buddhism, what was
I doing as a Catholic anymore?

My mother had come out to visit in December. I remember telling her I
was going to leave the Servites. Tom Sheerin had gone home to Chicago
for the Christmas holidays. He misbehaved badly at CTU in front of the
Passionists who were on a different floor from the ’Vites at CTU. Tom
got drunk and got up on a table and dared the whole Passionist
community to fuck him. In reality it was the drunkenness that caused
the Provincial to tell him to leave, but as I heard it, Tom’s
homosexuality was a problem for the Order. And mine would be too.

I followed Tom out of the Servites. He and I and a man we met through a
local club for Catholic youth named Paul Edwards—who worked as a
bookkeeper at Disneyland in Anaheim—shared a two bedroom apartment at
the St Francis Garden Apartments on Magnolia Ave in downtown
Riverside—just south of the “Parent Navel Orange” which was in a little
park, surrounded by steel bars.

I got a job working for a friend of the Castle’s named Kathleen
Ciardelli. Her maiden named was Theil. She was from a large family in
Idaho. Her sister Cee Ann also lived in Riverside. Kathleen had a gift
shop in the Brockton Arcade, a little center just off Magnolia and
Central Ave, south of downtown called The Windhover House (ah, named
for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ falcon). And here I was Brother Peregrine,
just out of the Order and looking for where to go next.

My friend Allan Pinka, on whom I had a very powerful crush—and
unrequited love—left the Servites from St. Louis at the semester break
and moved to Hollywood. We’d been in the hospital chaplaincy program
together that previous summer, along with Bruce. Allan had been going
into L.A. and discovered gay bars. I visited him a couple of times that
spring in 1970. I remember him taking me tricking to a bar called The
Farm—it had straw on the floor and they played “There’s a Meeting here
tonight” by The Limeliters, which is really a song about a Negro
Baptist Revival, but was “adapted” to the gay bar to mean meeting a
trick. Allan wanted me to pick somebody up. I just couldn’t bring
myself to speak to anybody. I was scared—and in love with Allan. We
stayed till the bar closed down—the last song was Paul McCartney
singing “Long Winding Road.” Allan was living up in the Hollywood
Hills, in a lower floor apartment under a house perched on the side of
a mountain, held up on wooden pilings. A magnificent view of the city.
I longed for Allan, and since I couldn’t have him, I longed for the
life he was living. And for the courage to meet somebody for sex whom I
found attractive—and for no other reason.

Back in Riverside, I was working at the
Windhover House. The business next door was a frame shop that had a
basement woodworking shop. There were two young men whom worked down
there. One of them was, I think, named Mike. He was Italian-looking,
handsome, pretty, with fair complexion and dark, curly hair that
spilled over his forehead. He was tall and well-built. He came into the
Windhover a couple of times and smiled warmly and was very friendly
with me. But always just in passing. He drove a blue Chevy Corvette
that was always parked in the back lot of the center, just outside the
back windows of the Windhover House. From the cash register station, I
could catch glimpses him leaving work every evening at 5:30 sharp.
That’s also when we closed; most evenings one of my jobs was to assist
Kathy in closing the register, adding up the credit card slips and
preparing a deposit. I’d usually notice Mike getting into his Corvette
as Kathy and I were closing up.

I longed for him to come in and talk to me. I tried going over to the
frameshop to chat with him, but he was always in the basement, not
available for contact with the public.

One afternoon, Cathy had jury duty, and she’d to leave at noon. I would
close up by myself. Since I was on my own schedule, I handled all the
register closing a little early and was ready to go out the door just a
few minutes before 5:30. I had a plan. I’d go out to the main
street—Magnolia Avenue—and started hitchhiking. I knew Mike would see
me and most likely give me a ride, since he always went that direction
anyway. It was about ten blocks to the St. Francis Garden Apartments. I
usually walked home, but I was hitchhiking in those days and it would
be easy to set my trap for Mike, so I could talk with him. I fervently
hoped he’d take me home with him. Of course, I didn’t really know if he
were gay, but how could I find out without making some kind of social
connection.

So I left the shop just before it was time for him to leave work. I
positioned myself on the other side of Magnolia, just across from the
exit to the parking lot, so he could easily swing wide and pull over as
he was coming out of the lot and pick me up. I was watching as he
started his car and began to come toward the exit. I put out my thumb.
I think I could see that he’d noticed me.

Just then a beat up old maroon Buick that had been speeding down the
inside lane of the wide four lane boulevard, suddenly put on its
brakes, squealing, and pulled over across the outside lane and stopped
to pick me up. As I was getting in the front seat, I noticed Mike pull
onto the road ahead and drive off. My plan had been foiled.

A couple of weeks later, Cathy again
had sometime to do in the afternoon and announced she was leaving early
and I could close up on my own. So here was a chance to do it again.

Same scenario. But this time, I dawdled getting over to the other side
of the street. I waited till I saw Mike actually in the exit. I looked
at him. Put out my thumb. He looked at me. I could tell my plan was
working.

Just then, a screeching of tires, the maroon Buick pulled over from the
middle lane and stopped to pick me up—again.

Twice in a row. It was too meaningful to not pay attention to. What was
the message? At the time, I understood this as a warning not to pursue
the life of casual sex and tricking that I saw—and envied—in Allan
Pinka’s life. I decided not to move to Hollywood in an effort to be
like Allan. Instead, I’d move to San Francisco. I could be gay—this
wasn’t an anti-sexual message. But I shouldn’t pursue that particular
kind of urban gay tricking life.

It was a most remarkable experience. I
understood the driver—an older man who worked in a hardware store about
six blocks closer in than the Windhover—to be an “incarnation” of God
the Father, giving me a pointer about the direction my life should go.

I’ve wondered if I was “protected” from something awful that might have
happened had my heart-throb Mike picked me up. Would he had been
hateful or dismissive? Or would he have been a great sexual experience
of the so-called one night stand variety that would cause me to want
more? Would connecting with him that day have caused me to move to
L.A.? Maybe the important thing was deciding then to move to San
Francisco. Maybe the important thing was deciding then that I should be
looking for true love and not just casual sex. That, indeed, is what
happened.

Allan, by the way, studied at the
California School of Professional Psychology, got a PhD and worked in
gay mental health. He had a long time partner, Harley Knight. They
lived together happily through the 70s and into the 1980s. Allan worked
at the L.A. Gay Community Services Center and was beloved and
well-respected. Allan has been recognized by the American Psychological
Association as “instrumental in the formation of the Association of
Lesbian and Gay Psychologists, which later became Division 44, the
Society for the Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
Issues.”

Harley died of AIDS in November 1986, Allan on January 4, 1989.

Toby Johnson, PhDis
author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of
his
teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and
religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual
issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's
spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor
of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness.

Johnson's book
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of
Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His GAY
PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They
remain
in
print.

FINDING
YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth
of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the
real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual
qualities of gay male consciousness.